Tag Archives: Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Why Suffering?

February 19, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

One of my favorite scenes from the story of Christ’s birth is of the far-seeing elderly Simeon reaching for the child in Mary’s arms, content now to die for having seen the Messiah with his own eyes. His words to Mary, more eerie than most mothers could graciously accept, always seemed a cryptic little side note from a strange and saintly old man. But the prophecy never struck me as a pivotal introduction to Luke’s overarching motif of suffering throughout his telling of the story of Christ. Says Simeon:

“This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.”(1)

Starting with Simeon, theologian Roy Harrisville draws out a side of Luke that surprised my reading of Luke’s Gospel and passion narrative—if only the surprise of seeing plainly something I’d never noticed.(2) Again and again Luke points out the necessity of Jesus’s suffering, long before he is approaching the cross. I was nonetheless left with a plaguing question perhaps less for Harrisville than for God—or Jesus along the road to Emmaus. Why was it necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into glory, as he tells the men as they walk toward Emmaus? Why was Christ’s suffering a matter of “divine necessity”?

Luke has long struck me as one of the more fascinating narrators of the life and death of Jesus, including details at a story level that make for more nuanced intrigue. “Day after day I was with you in the temple and you did not seize me,” says Jesus at his trial. “But all this has taken place, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled,” he explains in Matthew and similarly in Mark, “But let the scriptures be fulfilled.” Yet Luke’s recollection of the scene is much less formulaic. Jesus replies with a far more layered vision of all that is at work. “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness,” hinting that there is another hour and the power of something else at hand.(3) Luke repeatedly includes hints of these disparate visions at work, blind and brute ignorance beside cryptic insight like Simeon’s, a contrast seen quite literally in the very criminals on either side of Jesus on the cross.

All of this I have cherished in the evangelist’s telling. And I can now see, as Harrisville notes, that Luke’s relentless pointing to the necessity of Christ’s suffering indeed lies at the heart of this dramatic narration; I can see that Luke describes the life of Jesus as the way of the suffering Christ, and the passion of the cross as the necessary event which marks the approaching kingdom. But why? Beyond the need to encourage suffering readers, beyond the musts of scripture, why was it necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things? If Luke’s telling is indeed a motif of human ignorance alongside that of the divine necessity, I am thankful for the grace that is shown on the side of unknowing. And I am thankful that Jesus went willingly toward suffering for our own sakes even though we might not fully understand it.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Luke 2:34-35.

(2) Roy Harrisville, Fracture: The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2006).

(3) Parallel texts found in Matthew 26:56, Mark 14:49b, and Luke 22:53b.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Consider the Lilies

February 17, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Wendell Berry has written a poem that haunts me frequently. As a creative writer, the act of paying attention is both a spiritual and professional discipline. But far too often my aspirations for paying quality attention to everything dissolves into something more like attention deficit disorder. As it turns out, it is quite possible to see and not really see, to hear and not really hear. And this is all the more ironic when my very attempts to capture what I am seeing and hearing are the thing that prevent me from truly being present. Berry’s poem is about a man on holiday, who, trying to seize the sights and sounds of his vacation by video camera, manages to miss the entire thing.

…he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.(1)

I sometimes wonder if one of the most quoted sayings of Jesus is not often employed with a similar irony. “Consider the lilies,” Jesus said, “how they grow; they neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field…will he not much more clothe you? Therefore, do not worry” (Matthew 6:28-31). Typically, Jesus is quoted here as giving a helpful word against worry. And he is. But worry is not the only command he articulates. Consider the lilies, he said. We hear the first instruction peripherally, hurriedly, as mere set up for the final instruction of the saying. And in so doing, we miss something great, perhaps even something vital, both in the means and in the end. With our rationalistic sensibilities, we gloss over consideration of the lilies; ironically, in an attempt to consider the real work Jesus is asking us to do.

But what if considering the lilies is the work, the antidote to anxious, preoccupied lives? What if attending to beauty, to the ephemeral, to the fleeting details of a distracted world is a command Jesus wants us to take seriously in and of itself?

It is with such a conviction that artist Makoto Fujimura not only paints, but elsewhere comments on Mary and her costly pouring of perfume on the feet of Jesus. The anger of Judas and the disgust of the others are all given in rational terms, the cacophony of their reaction attempting to drown out her quiet act of attention: That bottle would have cost over a year’s wages. The poor could have used that money. This sinful woman clings to a holy man’s feet. Does he not see who it is who touches him? Their response to her and her act of beauty exposes their own inattention to a world beyond the one they see—to their own peril. As Fujimura writes, “Pragmatism, legalism, and greed cannot comprehend the power of ephemeral beauty. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness; the opposite of beauty is legalism. Legalism is hard determinism that slowly strangles the soul. Legalism injures by giving pragmatic answers to our suffering.”(2) The corollary, of course, is that beauty can offer healing; that paying attention, even to fleeting glimpses of glory, is deeply restorative.

When Jesus asks the world to consider the lilies, to consider beauty in the midst of all the ashes around us, his request is full of promise, for he is both the Source of beauty and its Subject. Paying attention to the ephemeral, being willing like Mary to risk and to recognize beauty, is in and of itself restorative because it is paying attention to him. Here, both the anxiety-addicted and the attention-overloaded can find solace in a different sort of kingdom: one in which there is room for the paradox of a fleeting world with eternity in its heart.

But perhaps Jesus also instructs the world to consider the lilies because it is characteristic of God’s concern for us. The daily liturgy of lilies comes with unceasing care and attention for all who will see it, the gift of a God who revels in the creation of yet another flower, the details of another sunset, the discovery of even one lost soul. Consider the lilies; how they grow. They neither toil, nor spin.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Wendell Berry, “The Vacation,” Selected Poems, (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1998), 157.

(2) Makoto Mujimura, “The Beautiful Tears,” Tabletalk, September, 2010.

John MacArthur

John MacArthur – How to Lose Your Joy

February 17, 2014 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

“I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Phil. 4:11).

True joy is God’s gift to every believer, yet many Christians seem to lack it. How can that be? Did God fail them? No. As with peace, assurance, and other benefits of salvation, joy can be forfeited for many reasons: willful sin, prayerlessness, fear, self-centeredness, focusing on circumstances, and lack of forgiveness are the main culprits.

Two of the most common joy-thieves are dissatisfaction and ingratitude. Both are by-products of the health, wealth, and prosperity mentality of our day. It has produced a generation of Christians who are more dissatisfied than ever because their demands and expectations are higher than ever. They’ve lost their perspective on God’s sovereignty and have therefore lost the ability to give thanks in all things.

In marked contrast, when Jesus taught about contentment and anxiety (Matt. 6:25-34), He spoke of food and clothing–the basic necessities of life. But preferences, not necessities, are the issue with us. We’re into style, personal appearance, job satisfaction, earning power, bigger homes, and newer cars. In the name of greater faith we even demand that God supply more miracles, more wealth, and more power.

Amid all that, Paul’s words sound a refreshing note of assurance and rebuke: “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Phil. 4:11). He made no demands on God but simply trusted in His gracious provision. Whether he received little or much made no difference to him. In either case he was satisfied and thankful.

Don’t be victimized by the spirit of our age. See God’s blessings for what they are and continually praise Him for His goodness. In doing so you will guard your heart from dissatisfaction and ingratitude. More important, you will bring joy to the One who is worthy of all praise.

Suggestions for Prayer:

Pray that the Holy Spirit will produce in you a joy and contentment that transcends your circumstances.

Make it a daily practice to thank God for specific blessings and trials, knowing that He uses both to perfect His will in you.

For Further Study:

Read 1 Kings 18:1–19:8.

How did Elijah deal with the false prophets of Baal?

How did he deal with Jezebel’s threat?

What caused Elijah’s shift from a spiritual high to a spiritual low?

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Good and the True

February 14, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

It is the longing I first remember. I desperately wanted to be good. Of course, I tested the boundaries tightly drawn around parental definitions of good and bad, approved, condemned, and censored. It was usually clear that I was not lining up with these oft-voiced thoughts of the good. Yet somehow this didn’t seem to enter into my childhood account of the virtue. I wanted to be good. Good in a manner far beyond parents and teachers (though I seemed more eager to please the later than the former). Good in a way that altogether overwhelmed the inane legalisms and relative pieties around me. Good in a way that somehow reached the source itself.

It was Plato who famously argued that we should struggle out of the dark caves of ordinary human existence and towards the eternal Forms—of which the supreme Form is the Good. The pull of goodness was for me the first step toward the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (whose very name indicates the first step was not my own). I desperately longed to be good, to know Good, to somehow become united with it. Yet unfortunately, when climbing out of dark caves, churchly regulations and narcissistic perfectionisms look much like the thing you think you are seeking, and the terrifying God who demands perfection seems the terrible schoolmaster who will not have it any other way. No matter how many A’s my adolescent efforts were able to manufacture, no matter the good deeds for shut-ins, the outrage at local racism, the attention to ethics in history and in school, God seemed a teacher I could not please.

My pursuit of the good no sooner became an impossible undertaking than it became my most devout undertaking. The God I followed through high school and college was one I feared, though at the time it was not the kind fear that comes from the force of great beauty, but more the terror of insatiable expectation. I did not yet have the words to voice what C.S. Lewis’s Orual managed in Till We Have Faces, when she finally had her chance to state her case against the gods. And yet, the first time I heard her words I knew they were my own: “That there should be gods at all, there’s our misery and bitter wrong. There’s no room for you and us in the same world. You’re a tree in whose shadow we can’t thrive.”

I resigned myself to this God nonetheless. Whether I saw myself more as the wry opportunist keeping one’s enemies close or the sad duckling eating out of the hand of the one who plucked all her feathers, in those days God was never far from my mind. I wanted to be good, I wanted to please, I wanted to meet God’s approval, I wanted to be united with it. I knew I was failing, but new formulas for success, much like the latest self-help manual, appeared as often as I needed them. Until finally, I resigned myself to failure.

It was in the throes of giving up my defeated attempts to please this divine terror and pursue his Good that his face began to change. Images of good kings, gentle fathers, and untame lions, childhood hopes and fairytales long forgotten, began to appear in thoughts and dreams. Some one or some thing seemed to be on my trail, and I found myself suddenly startled by the troubling idea that I was angry—not because I couldn’t reach the higher good myself, nor at the ravenous headmaster who demanded it. No, I was maddened at the thought that the Father who demands perfection could be good and kind Himself. Goodness had so long seemed unattainable that I willed the Source had to be evil or only a myth. I was angry at the possibility of a good God’s mere existence. Suddenly my personal quest for perfection seemed disconcertingly not about me, but about a God who might well be both good and true.

The idea of following God because of some good this following would afford me, the idea of following God out of fear, dread, legality, or even hatred—this somehow made sense to me. But the idea of following God because the story was true, because a good God was really there, because Christ indeed was who he said he was—this had never entered my mind.

What if it was all true?

It meant entertaining a new starting point; it meant admitting that I might not have been seeing with all the facts in the first place. It meant that God was there all along.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus

February 13, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Excerpts taken from Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi. Copyright © 2014 by Nabeel Qureshi. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Click for additional information or promotional offer.

Fading footsteps echoed through the halls of the mosque as the humid summer evening drew to a close. The other worshipers were heading back to their homes and families for the night, but my thoughts were still racing. Every fiber of my being wrestled with itself. With my forehead pressed into the ground and heart pounding in my chest, my mind scrutinized each word my lips whispered into the musty carpet.

These were not new words. I had been taught to recite this Arabic phrase 132 times, every single day, from a time before I even knew my name. It was the sajda, the portion of the ritual prayers in which Muslims lower themselves before Allah, glorifying His loftiness. The words had always flowed with ease, but this day was different. As my lips exercised their rote rituals, my mind questioned everything I thought I knew about God.

Subhana Rabbi al-ala.

Glorified is my Lord, the Highest.

“Glorified is my Lord… Who is my Lord? Who are You, Lord? Are You Allah, the God of my father and forefathers? Are You the God I have always worshiped? The God my family has always worshiped? Surely You are the one who sent Muhammad (SAW)(1) as the final messenger for mankind and the Quran as our guide? You are Allah, the God of Islam, aren’t You? Or are You…” I hesitated, fighting the blasphemy I was about to propose. But what if the blasphemy was the truth?

“Or are You Jesus?”

My heart froze, as if indignant at my mind for risking hell. “Allah, I would never say that a man became equal to You. Please forgive me and have mercy on me if that’s what I said, because that’s not what I mean. No man is equal to You. You are infinitely greater than all of creation. Everything bows down before You, Allah subhanahu wata ‘ala.(2)

“No, what I mean to say is that You, O Allah, are all powerful. Surely You can enter into creation if You choose. Did You enter into this world? Did You become a man? And was that man Jesus?

“O Allah, the Bible couldn’t be right, could it?”

As if on parallel timelines, my lips continued to pray in sajda while my mind relentlessly fought with itself. The Arabic phrase was to be recited twice more before the sajda would be complete.

Subhana Rabbi al-ala.

Glorified is my Lord, the Highest.

“But how is it conceivable that Allah, the highest being of all, would enter into this world? This world is filthy and sinful, no place for the One who deserves all glory and all praise. And how could I even begin to suggest that God, the magnificent and splendid Creator, would enter into this world through the birth canal of a girl? Audhu billah,(3) that’s disgusting! To have to eat, to grow fatigued, and to sweat and spill blood, and to be finally nailed to a cross. I cannot believe this. God deserves infinitely more. His majesty is far greater than this.

“But what if His majesty is not as important to Him as His children are?”

Subhana Rabbi al-ala.

Glorified is my Lord, the Highest.

“Of course we are important to Him, but Allah does not need to die in order to forgive us. Allah is all powerful, and He can easily forgive us if He chooses. He is al-Ghaffar and ar-Rahim!(4) His forgiveness flows from His very being. What does coming into this world to die on a cross have to do with my sins? It doesn’t even make sense for Allah to die on the cross. If He died, who was ruling the universe? Subhanallah,(5) He cannot die! That is part of His glory. There is no need for these charades. He can simply forgive from His throne.

Rising from the ground and sitting on my heels, I recited the takbir.

Allah-hu-akbar.

God is great.

“God, I know that You are great in reality, but some of what the Holy Quran teaches is far from great. I am having a very difficult time understanding it, Allah… Please, Allah, may all this doubt not anger You. I must have misunderstood something, but there’s no way You, being good and loving, would have given some of the commands found in the Quran. I have found so much violence and contempt in its pages, the pages of a book I have read and loved every day because it is Your word…

“Who are You?”

At-tahiyyatu lillahi, was-salawatu wat-tayyibatu. As salamu ‘alayka ayyuha n-nabiyyu wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. As salamu ‘alayna wa-’ala ‘ibadi llahi salihin.

All compliments, prayers, and good things are due to Allah. Allah’s peace be upon you, O Prophet, and His mercy and blessings. Peace be on us and on all righteous servants of Allah.

“I praise You, Allah. All homage is certainly due to You. But there is so much I do not understand…

Following the traditions of the Prophet and the guidance of my parents, I pointed my forefinger skyward while reciting the proclamation:

Ashhadu alla ilaha illa llahu wa ashhadu anna Muhammadan ‘abduhu wa-rasuluh.

I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and messenger.

“O Allah, have mercy on me. How can I bear witness that Muhammad (SAW) is Your messenger? It used to be so easy! Ammi taught me to love Muhammad (SAW) because he was the greatest man who ever lived, and there was no close second. She taught me that his generosity was abundant, his mercy was incomparable, and his love for mankind was beyond measure. I was taught that he would never wage war unless he was defending the ummah,(6) and that he fought to elevate the status of women and the downtrodden. He was the perfect military leader; he was the ultimate statesman; and he was the exemplary follower of Allah. He was al-Insan al-Kamil, the perfect man. He was Rahmatu-lil alameen, God’s mercy personified for all the world. It was easy to bear witness that such a man is Rasul Allah, the messenger of God.

“But now I know the truth about him, and there’s too much to sweep under the rug. I know about his first revelation, his raids on caravans, his child bride, his marriage to Zainab, the black magic cast upon him, his poisoning, his assassinations, his tortures, and…”

My thoughts slowed as they arrived at the one issue that I simply could not overlook. “And how could Muhammad (SAW), my beloved Prophet, have allowed … that?”

Awash in empathy, my mind drifted from the prayers. I was still grappling with what I had come across while investigating the Quran…

My eyes shot open as I snapped back to reality. I was still in the mosque, still praying the salaat. My overwhelming revulsion toward Muhammad suddenly met with immediate contrition. I had been impudent before Allah. Muhammad was still my Prophet. I still swore allegiance to him. I had gone too far.

How could I continue like this? Astaghfirullah.(7)

Quickly, I finished the rest of the ritual prayers, ending by turning my head to the right and the left: Assalaamo alaikum wa rahmutallah.

The peace and mercy of Allah be upon you.

After a pause, I let my face fall into my hands. Tears blurred my sight. The ritual prayers had ended, and now it was time for my heart’s prayer.

“God, I want Your peace. Please have mercy on me and give me the peace of knowing You. I don’t know who You are anymore, but I know that You are all that matters. You created this world; You give it meaning; and either You define its purpose or it has none.

“Please, God Almighty, tell me who You are! I beseech You and only You. Only You can rescue me. At Your feet, I lay down everything I have learned, and I give my entire life to You. Take away what You will, be it my joy, my friends, my family, or even my life. But let me have You, O God. Light the path that I must walk. I don’t care how many hurdles are in the way, how many pits I must jump over or climb out of, or how many thorns I must step through. Guide me on the right path. If it is Islam, show me how it is true! If it is Christianity, give me eyes to see! Just show me which path is Yours, dear God, so I can walk it.”

Although I did not know it, that peace and mercy of God which I desperately asked for would soon fall upon me. God was about to give me supernatural guidance through dreams and visions, forever changing my heart and the course of my life.

Nabeel Qureshi is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) This symbol represents the Arabic phrase sall Alaahu ‘alay-hi wa-sallam, which means “peace and blessings of Allah be upon him,” a standard Muslim formula after mentioning the name of Muhammad.

(2) This formula, subhanahu wata ‘ala, is often repeated after the name of Allah, meaning “glorified and exalted.”

(3) A common Muslim formula meaning “I seek refuge in Allah,” this phrase is verbalized after something dishonorable, blasphemous, or otherwise negative is stated or suggested.

(4) In mainstream Islam, it is commonly understood that Allah has ninety-nine names. These are two, translated as “the forgiver” and “the merciful” respectively.

(5) A very common formula meaning “glory be to Allah,” this phrase is often exclaimed whenever good news is heard or something positive is stated.

(6) An Arabic term meaning “community,” referring to all Muslims.

(7) A common formula of repentance meaning “I seek forgiveness from Allah.”

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Father of Mine

February 12, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Not far into John’s Gospel, Jesus seems to be gaining enemies at every turn. He uses a whip to drive men and livestock out of the temple. He chooses the wrong day to heal a man who cannot walk, angering religious leaders for his violation of the holy Sabbath. But it is because of his words that they seek all the more to kill him. At their anger, Jesus simply replies, “My Father is always at work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”(1)

To the person well-versed in biting comebacks and fatal rhetoric, these words don’t seem at all like fighting-words. But to Jews who knew a history of combating (and failing to combat) the polytheistic influences of surrounding nations, Jesus uttered what seemed the most blasphemous notion possible. He was calling God his own Father, describing their work as shared, making himself equal with God.

The notion of God as Father was not a new concept. Even to the Jews who took offense at Jesus’s words that day, God was understood as Father in the sense that God is creator, that God is Lord, protector, redeemer, working for our good. Fourteen times in the Old Testament God is spoken of as Father, and each instance depicts a sacred glimpse of divine fatherhood.

But here, Jesus scandalously adds to the notion of Father a distinct element of intimacy and uniqueness with himself. Nowhere in Palestinian Judaism is God addressed by an individual as my father.(2) Jesus’s use of such an title—and elsewhere the intimate “abba” or daddy—reveals the very basis of his communion with God, a communion he then boldly offers his followers: “This, then, is how you should pray:

‘Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.’”(3)

For those familiar, the invitation to approach the mystery of Son and Father and Spirit may seem commonplace. “Heavenly Father” and “only Son” may not seem like phrases with which we need to wrestle. Yet this vast allowance is not a quality inherent in other religions; it is, in fact, an obstruction to some, an enigma to others. The startling Christian confidence that God can be approached as Father is the unique and pressing gift of the Son.

The work of a man in India reminded me once that this claim is both one of highest theology and of actual grace at the ground level. Reverend Deveraj works among the discarded lives of Mumbai, India. For nearly twenty years, the ministry he founded has fostered life-saving outreach to orphaned children, drug addicts, and victims of the sex trade. To each one he offers the same message as many times as necessary: “Whenever you are ready, your Father’s house is waiting.” Often, he offers for years.

Such is the startling, radical, simple message of Christ. “In my Father’s house are many rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.“(4) What if there is indeed not a cosmic sadist or an indifferent force, but a Father who waits, who longs to gather his children together and take them into his arms? The gift is both highest theology and ordinary miracle: God offers us a place, held within the greater gift of adoption. This God is Father, whose name is hallowed and whose kingdom comes, whom we know through the Son and by the Spirit, whom we run toward as children. His name is Abba.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) John 5:17.

(2) See Joachim Jeremias, Jesus and the Message of the New Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002).

(3) Matthew 6:9-10.

(4) John 14:20.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Toward Freedom

February 11, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A recent article in Christianity Today Magazine caught my attention. Excerpted from his forthcoming book, What Good is God?, author Philip Yancey discusses his speaking and listening tour throughout several countries in the Middle East in 2009 (1). Part of his listening included hearing how the “Christian” West was viewed by those living in predominantly Islamic countries. Time and again, he heard a familiar refrain: freedom in the West was equated with decadence. Yancey writes, “Much of the misgiving…for the West stems from our strong emphasis on freedom…where freedom so often leads to decadence.” (2)

Of course, Yancey would quickly acknowledge that the freedom we enjoy in the West is often taken for granted. In general, we are free to do and to be whatever we want. We move unhindered towards the achievement of our own personal freedoms and objectives, without worrying about impediment or coercive control from outside forces. Certainly, the freedom to move about countries and across state borders effortlessly is a gift enjoyed by many in the Western world. We have the freedom to worship, unhindered by government intervention. Many who have financial abundance are able to access freedoms that only money can buy. We are free to think as we want, speak what we want, and do what we want. In comparison with people in places where freedoms are curtailed, we have the freedom to…. fill in the blank with endless possibilities.

But taking an honest look at how freedom is exercised in the Western world means turning a careful ear to this critique from those looking in from the outside. The belief that individual freedom to do, be, or say whatever we want is often cut off and isolated any thoughtfulness towards community consequences or responsibility. Sadly, freedom is rarely viewed as an opportunity to serve others.

The apostle Paul raised this issue as he wrote to the early Christians at Corinth. In discussing matters of personal freedom he exhorted these early Christians that “all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. Let no one seek his or her own good, but that of his or her neighbor….whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (I Corinthians 10:23, 24, 31). In his letter to the Galatian Christians, Paul applies the gift of freedom to a sense of corporate responsibility: “You were called to freedom; only do not turn your freedom into and opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 3:13-14).

Paul’s definition of freedom for love and service seems to fly in the face of understanding freedom as doing whatever one wants to do, individually. And while deploring the restriction or oppression of human freedom as evidenced in totalitarian regimes and systems, might it also be prudent to deplore the unchecked, unthinking, and often self-centered understanding of freedom that occupies many Western societies and systems. We are called to freedom, freedom for others–and not simply as the individualistic pursuit of self-interest. Rightly understood, freedom is grounded in love for the sake of one another.

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Philip Yancey, “A Living Stream in the Desert” Christianity Today, November 2010, 30-34.

(2) Ibid., 32.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Mysterious Safety

February 10, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Someone told me recently that he wondered if humans only truly ever pray when we are in the midst of despair. Despite creed or confession, is it only when we have no other excuses to offer, no other comfort to hide behind, no more façades to uphold, that we are most likely to bow in exhaustion and be real with God and ourselves? “For most of us,” writes C.S. Lewis, “the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model.” In our distress, we stand before God as we truly are—creatures in need hope and mercy.

The words within the ancient Hebrew story of Jonah that are of most interest to me are words that in some ways seem not to fit in the story at all.(1) Interrupting a narrative that quickly draws in its hearers, a narrative about Jonah, the text very fleetingly pauses to bring us the voice of Jonah himself before returning again to the narrative. The eight lines come in the form of a distraught and despairing, though poetic prayer. And while it is true that the poem could be omitted without affecting the coherence of the story, the deliberate jaunt in the narrative text seems to provide a moment of significant commentary to the whole. The eight verses of poetry not only mark an abrupt shift in the tone of the text, but also in the attitude of its main character. The poetic words of the prophet, spoken as a cry of deliverance, arise from the belly of the great fish—a stirring image reminiscent of another despairing soul’s question: Where can I flee from your presence? If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me.

Jonah’s eloquent prayer for deliverance stands out in a book that is detailed with his egotistic mantras and glaring self-deceptions. By his own actions, Jonah finds himself in darkness, and yet it is in the dark that he speaks most honestly to God. The story is vaguely familiar to many hearers, and yet memory often seems to minimize the distress that broke Jonah’s silence with God. The popular notion that Jonah went straight from the side of the ship into the mouth of the fish is not supported by either the narrative as a whole or Jonah’s prayer. As one suggests, “[Jonah] was half drowned before he was swallowed. If he was still conscious, sheer dread would have caused him to faint—notice that there is no mention of the fish in his prayer. He can hardly have known what caused the change from wet darkness to an even greater dry darkness. When he did regain consciousness, it would have taken some time to realize that the all-enveloping darkness was not that of Sheol but of a mysterious safety.”(2)

When I think of the prayers I have offered in my deepest despair, the despair is always memorable, palpable even. And yet so is the sense that I was not yelling into an altogether empty darkness, that my voice was not alone, but that in this pained and enveloping darkness somehow the veil between creator and creature was parted. In the mysterious safety of the fish, Jonah seems to attest to the link between prayer and desperation; but more so, he attests to a God who hears in the void, whether the darkness is self-inflicted or thrown upon us like a violent sea. Likewise, the prophet reminds us of what is all too often our ironic refusal to face the face of a God who is equally present in the light of the ordinary. In prayer and desperation, Jonah saw himself without pretense. If only momentarily, the drowning prophet clung to a truth more secure than comfort and able than his alternatives: “Salvation belongs to the LORD.”

Sadly, Jonah’s distracted theology returned not long after the prayer was finished and his life was spewed back into normalcy. For many of us, it is a familiar tale. Honest words offered in despair remain with God in the darkness where we once cried out, the return of familiarity convincing us of a God more comfortably and safely remote. But if Jonah leaves us with a thought in the dark, it is the presence of options. Which view of God do you prefer? Which veil? Which distance? Which safety?

Once convinced there was a place he could flee from God’s presence, the prophet, sinking further into the depths of the sea, realized he was mercifully mistaken.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) See Jonah 2:2-10.

(2) H.L. Ellison, “Jonah,” The Expositors Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985), 374.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – One Real Thing

February 7, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A story is told about a man who made an impression on his dinner guests in such a way that the memory stayed with them for decades. The man was known to many as one of the foremost Christian ministers of the twentieth century. His dinner guests, who were of a different persuasion, did not recall striking attempts to convert them or winsome arguments for the Christian faith. They remembered this: “He carved the meat with such dignity.”(1)

Much could be said of this observation. Much could be said of a theology that can shape dinner parties, consumption, even the way one carves meat. This is perhaps particularly true for a world where the disconnect between farm and freezer is often so great that the origins, let alone the dignity, of our food is entirely unknown. I recall a former professor telling the story of serving a roasted chicken for Sunday dinner as a special treat. His young son, far more accustomed to seeing chicken in less-identifiable “nuggets” or packaging, stared with fixation at the chicken on the table, slowly coming to recognize its form—body, wing, legs—when suddenly he yelped a cry of utter disgust. “It’s a bird!” He screamed. “Gross!”

My own disconnect with food and faith is not always so far off. In one of the more memorable scenes of the classic work Supper of the Lamb, priest and gastronome Robert Farar Capon, noting such a disconnect, instructs the reader to take a moment to connect with an onion. “Seated before your onion (resisting the temptation to feel silly), you will note to begin with,” he writes, “that the onion is a thing, a being, just as you are… Together with knife, board, table, and chair, you are the constituents of a place in the highest sense of the word. This is a Session, a meeting, a society of things.”(2) Step by step Capon then leads the reader through the process of examining this confrontation, examining self and onion as fellow living things. At one point, reducing a piece of the onion to cell and skin by simply pressing the water out of it, he reflects on this “aqueous house of cards” with storied depth. “You have just now reduced it to its parts, shivered it into echoes, and pressed it to a memory, but you have also caught the hint that a thing is more than the sum of all the insubstantialities that comprise it. Hopefully, you will never again argue that the solidities of the world are mere matters of accident, creatures of air and darkness, temporary and meaningless shapes out of nothing.”(3)

There is indeed something dignified about this world of living things, about all the solidities around us, about eating and dining and breaking bread with others who share our mean estate. For the Christian, all of this dignity is understood as rising from the graciousness of God as creator and provider, and thus accordingly, the goodness of every living thing and creature God has made. This, I would argue, is the very worldview that was reflected in the way the thankful theologian served dinner all those years ago. In fact, fifteen years after dining with his guests, the man had occasion to hear about the mark he had made. His response to his impression of dignified meat carving was not one of surprise, but doxology. “Well, the animal gave its life for me!”

Nonetheless, his carving, like the remembrance of Christ in the breaking of bread, was noteworthy to his guests not because it was a covert attempt at Christian symbolism, a religious act meant to persuade in abstraction. It was noteworthy because it was as real as the meal before them. And this is precisely the sort of kingdom into which Jesus invites: a kingdom of solidities, a kingdom of dignity and sacrifice, a kingdom ready to house God’s creatures even now. As Capon concludes of thing and creature, “One real thing is closer to God than all the diagrams in the world.” Thus the dignity of God can indeed be found in meat-carving. The love of the Trinity in a gathering of friends. A taste of the creator in broken bread. The kingdom of God is not in words, Jesus said, but in power. In this world of living and dying things, his table and the invitation to join him is a real meal, a solid offering of promise.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Story told by Mark Greene of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

(2) Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 11.

(3) Ibid., 17.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Loss of Words

February 6, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

I remember the time when my son had to go through a very simple surgery when he was five years old. He was not able to breathe properly, so the doctors had to remove some extra tissue surrounding his nostril and nasal passages. During the hours and days after his surgery, my once-a-chatterbox son had become completely quiet. Because of the fear of being hurt if he spoke, he quit using words for his way of communication. It was overwhelming to see my boy struggling to express himself in that condition.

As I assisted my son get back to talking, I could not help but think of how unexpectedly Zechariah lost his speech after he questioned the angel who brought him such good news about a long-waited child in his old age.(1) In Zechariah’s case, the temporary loss of words was something of an acknowledgement of the promised child he doubted, a child who would prepare the way for the Messiah. Though he knew why he was made silent, I am sure he felt restless until he held his son in his arms and was finally able to describe his emotions properly.

There are spiritual retreat centers in various locations around the world, which offer “Silent Weeks” to those who are over-exhausted from excessive communication. During these weeks, individuals are banned from verbal communication in order to quiet themselves internally. The goal is simply to bring back the core purpose of real interaction: tending to what is being said in reality.

When the words are taken from us either because of the inability to speak or the lack of verbal direction, we become strangely poor, almost incomplete. There are two sides of this poverty: one is internal, losing the comfort of one’s capability to express oneself fully. The other is external, as one finds no real guidance to turn to for wisdom. In my opinion, the latter has eternal ramifications if not satisfied in a timely manner.

Similar to these weeks, biblical history claims there was a time when God stopped talking. Between the periods from the prophet Malachi until the first written words of Matthew’s gospel, we do not read any account of God communicating to his people through words. Humankind experienced a poverty of words, a lack of communication and intervention from the creator. It was a long pause before the grand entrance of God into this silence, fully revealing God’s essence by identifying who God is, as the ultimate Word, Jesus Christ.

Hearing this Word, Christians often note realizing the fact that we have been poor, living in the poverty of words over our lives’ direction. Once we hear and know this Word, this is when we discover that only the living Word can quench our thirst for meaning.

Those who have heard are eternally grateful to the Spirit who reveals Christ, the Word, to us. I also think of Jesus’s humility by limiting himself, becoming poor himself for a time, just so we would not stay in a poverty of words. It did hurt him being on the cross, similar to my son’s feeling after the surgery. But one big difference: This did not stop Jesus from talking and declaring the fullness of salvation by saying: “It is finished!”

Our poverty of words can be a distant memory for humankind, since God has spoken with the ultimate Word. Once this Person is fully internalized and lived by, from then on, both the creator and the created enjoy the pleasure of a mutual, ongoing conversation.

Senem Ekener is regional director for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Istanbul, Turkey.

(1) Cf. Luke 1:18-20

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Story and Ice

February 5, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Robi Damelin knows it is all too alluring for the media to depict an extremist screaming at the top of a mountain about a greater nation or the mother of a suicide bomber saying she’s proud to have given her child; the alternative does not sell as well as the sensational. “But I can tell you of all these mothers who’ve lost children,” she says. “I don’t care what they say to the media. I know what happens to them at night when they go to bed. We all share the same pain.”(1)

Damelin is a mother who knows this pain well. Sitting beside her, Ali Abu Awwad, a soft-spoken young man thirty years her junior, knows a similar pain. Robi and Ali each tell stories of loved ones lost to violence, stories that happen to intersect at a place that puts them at painful odds with one another. Each grieves the loss of a family member caused at hands on opposite sides of the same violent conflict. For Ali, filled with the loss of his beloved younger brother, that place of intersection was once filled with thoughts familiar to many in his situation: How many from the other side need to die in order to make my pain feel better? Yet bravely, he began to notice something else at the crossroads of his side and theirs. For both Robi and Ali, it was the tears of the other side that would change the way they tell their stories.

Some stories, as Kafka prescribed, indeed provide the ax for the frozen sea inside us. Rather than crafting for themselves stories that add to the cold sea of hatred and despair which devastated them, Robi and Ali tell of the common grief that cracks the frozen wall between them. They are now a part of a growing network of survivors on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict who share their sorrow, stories of loved ones, and ideas for lasting change. “It’s the shared pain that allows you to open to another place completely,” says Robi. “If you want to be right it’s very easy,” adds Ali. “But to be honest is very difficult. Being honest means to be human.”(2)

Their story brings something I have been thinking about personally into a much broader place. Namely, the stories we tell ourselves powerfully shape our worlds: I am a victim. I am entitled. I am right. I am abandoned. I am in control. These simple narratives rest at the heart of the things we do and say, quietly but decidedly shaping our worldviews, our identities, our humanity. They at times act as self-fulfilling prophecies, narratives which keep us locked in worlds we may even claim we want to leave: I am devastated. I am betrayed. I am on my own. The tale of Ali and Robi shows two people willing to change the more common narratives of power and prerogative to the much less comfortable narratives of shared loss and weakness: We are human. We are grieving. We know the same pain. And as such, they are finding humanity where there was once only suspicion, relationship where a great divide often reigns, and a common story which chips away at a great frozen sea.

Unfortunately, ours is a world often suspicious with regards to common narratives. Even common stories of human existence can be seen as controlling attempts to manipulate or undermine the individual’s story, which is viewed as supreme. The master narrative is similarly dismissed, rejected on grounds of totalitarianism. According to Robert Royal in The New Religious Humanists, the current philosophy is one that favors “petites histoires, that is, personal stories as the only locus of rich meaning open to us.” In this view, he continues, “all the old grands recits—Christianity, Hegelianism, Marxism, even liberalism—are dangerous totalizing and potentially terroristic illusions.”(3) The pervasive contemporary mindset prefers an individual approach to seeing the world, speculating on our origins, perceiving our destinies—independently.

But without undermining the power of personal stories, can we be satisfied with them alone? If petites histoires are really the only locus of meaning open to us, are we content with the effects of being held within those walls? Is the world the better for it? Robi and Ali, for one, would remain enslaved and frozen in a bitter conflict without the commonality that opened their eyes to a deeper humanity. Moreover, without a grand narrative that can truly answer humanity’s grand questions, the individual story only axes away futilely at a frozen abyss it can never crack.

The most remarkable gift of the master narrative I find myself within is that the storytelling is not over. I am instead freed to hear and tell and retell my petites histoires in light of the whole story, which is yet unfolding even as it proclaims a definitive end. Which means, that sometimes the stories I tell myself are mercifully corrected by far greater I am statements than my own. That is to say, the quiet narrative that insists I am alone is told beside, “I am the good shepherd who searches for even one that is lost.”(4) The subtle fable of personal control is confronted by a story of life, death, and resurrection; a remarkable beginning and a far more remarkable end. Stepping both into history and petites histoires, the trinitarian God as storyteller shows us what it means to be human, with one Word, breaking through every frozen barrier.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad with Krista Tippett “No More Taking Sides,” Speaking of Faith, February 18, 2010.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Gregory Wolfe Ed., The New Religious Humanists (New York: Free Press, 1997), 98.

(4) Cf. John 10:11-14, Luke 15:1-10

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Blessed Sorrow

February 4, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Just a few weeks ago the resounding chorus of “Happy New Year” rang out around the world. And as happens at the beginning of each New Year, feelings of hope and expectation are high. Yet before the month is over in my little corner of the world, I have learned of sorrows that would seek to overthrow any hope of a ‘happy’ new year. Someone has attempted suicide; someone’s bid to adopt a baby, thwarted. A young man is in jail because of his mental illness, and another couple lost their young dog in a freak accident. The temptation to despair swirls all around and seeks to drown even the faintest glimmer of hope.

And these are just a few examples. Our television screens and Internet news feeds broadcast images of chaos and destruction around the world. Famine, genocide, and political oppression mar the landscapes of Syria, the Sudan, Zimbabwe, and the Central African Republic. Malnourished children die by the thousands in rural areas of Afghanistan with no access to food or help. This is the kind of suffering that goes beyond the depths of sorrow, leaving the bereaved as exiles in the disconsolate realm of mourning.

In all of our lives, our ‘local worlds’ hold micro-tragedies and disasters that overwhelm us. There is also the mourning that comes from the consistent failings in our personal lives. We do not meet our own expectations for ourselves or for others. We recognize the ways in which we have let others down or caused them harm. Perhaps we despair at ever becoming who we thought we would be, beset as we are by so much brokenness.

In this mournful world comes an unlikely and ancient word of blessing: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”(1) How is it that those whose lives are marked by mourning are blessed? And what is the comfort that is promised?

Author Gerald Sittser believes that those who mourn are blessed “by living authentically in a world of misery.”(2) He continues, “[Sorrow]…expresses the emotional anguish of people who feel pain for themselves or for others. Sorrow is noble and gracious. It enlarges the soul until the soul is capable of mourning and rejoicing simultaneously, of feeling the world’s pain and hoping for the world’s healing at the same time. However painful, sorrow is good for the soul.”(3) Sittser doesn’t speak as a detached observer, but as one who is intimately acquainted with mourning. He lost his mother, his wife, and his daughter all in one tragic accident.

Sometimes, there is the expectation that promised comfort to those who mourn will come when we “recover” from our losses and no longer dwell in the realm of mourning. The crowds that followed Jesus of Nazareth, the crowds who first heard these words of blessing in the midst of sorrow would remain poor, hungry, and maintain their position as the least and the last. But Jesus didn’t reserve blessing or comfort if they ceased mourning. Instead, the blessing is extended “to those who mourn” and not in spite of it. The ancient prophet Isaiah described one who would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And in Jesus, Christians saw this sorrow personified. Consequently, those who put their hope in the God revealed in Jesus can still hope even as they mourn.

So what is the promise of blessing for those who mourn? It is a mystery that is both available, and yet to come. Blessing becomes available as the mourner allows her sorrow to enlarge her heart for a world that mourns. It may come as eyes are opened to see streams in the desert, or scout out the distant, dry land in the midst of the flood. In Sittser’s words it is a kind of blessing that recognizes how “life can still be good—good in a different way than before, but nevertheless good.”(4) This kind of blessing is not necessarily easy or quickly gained, but can be apprehended in the form of human touch and companionship, a gentle smile, through loving acts of service, or through the gift of a flower.

The grace that is available now offers us a glimpse of comfort that is promised by Jesus for the future. While there is a comfort that comes from being a part of the community of other mourners, a time is coming when God himself will be the Comforter for those who mourn. Behold, the dwelling of God is with human beings. God will dwell with them, and they shall be God’s people, and God himself will be with them; God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.(5)

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Matthew 5:4.

(2) Gerald Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 63.

(3) Ibid., 63.

(4) Ibid., 68.

(5) Revelation 21:3-4.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Audacity of Imitation

February 3, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Unflattering as an adjective, insulting as a noun, imitation has fallen on particularly hard times. No one wants to be an imitation of a favorite songwriter, a fake impersonator of the grammy-award winning original. No restaurant proprietor wants to be reviewed as the “imitation” of a famed eatery; inherent in the classification is the notion of being a lesser version of the real thing. An idea is never lauded for being a good imitator of another, and imitation vanilla is rarely, if ever, invited to a cookbook. Originality is by far the more the accepted fashion of the day. And the pressure to be original—to be different than, better than, more than—is both constant and intense. It is the modern way of distinguishing oneself, whether applying for college or making a pithy tweet. From impressions to possessions to thoughts, being original seems to be everything.

The pressure may be subtle but it can be overwhelming. It is quite likely the reason why social media seems exhausting to me, why meeting someone with similar ideas can just as easily promote worry as it might a sense of camaraderie, or why I sometimes delay writing out of dread that it’s just all been said before. The pressure to be the inventor and not the imitator, the original and not the clone, the drive to make a new statement about oneself ad nauseam is both a strange and exhausting task.

I was thinking about this trend as I read some of the familiar, distinguishing, oft-quoted lines of Martin Luther King Jr. recently. In light of our need for incessantly original tweets and blog entries, it is interesting to note that King’s most trusted advisors were horrified when they heard him launch into his “I have a Dream” speech that fateful day in Washington. To them, this speech was played out. It was old and tired and not at all the new statement they were hoping to make for the Civil Rights Movement. He had given versions of this speech in other places and on other occasions, not the least of which a crowd of twenty-five thousand in Detroit. According to those who had helped him write the new speech the night before, they agreed they needed something far more original to make the greatest mark. Together they wrote a new speech that night, but on the day of the event, King set novelty aside for a less original dream.

Like his advisors, our modern allegiance to originality might make it difficult to imagine staring at a crowd of two hundred thousand, charged with a new and bold opportunity to make a statement heard by more of the United States than ever before, and deciding in a split moment not to say something new. Thankfully, Dr. King had the courage to believe that what we needed was not reinvention or novelty but, in fact, very old news. His acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize reflected a similar conviction:

“I have the audacity to believe that… what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land. ‘And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.’ I still believe that we shall overcome.”(1)

To those inclined to obey the unrelenting orders of repackaging, reinventing, and re-presenting oneself ever-anew, proclaiming an ancient hope, being a follower of an ancient way, indeed, imitating an unlikely rabbi from the first century, likely seems as boring and unattractive as it is strange. Who wants to be an imitator, let alone an imitator of an antiquated mind and crucified body?

It may well be one of the most countercultural stances the church takes and invites a watching world to join. The Christian is an imitation. She walks a curiously ancient path toward a Roman cross of torture; he stands, unoriginally, with a humiliated body that bore the sorrow and pain of crucifixion. The way of Christ is not new. But the invitation of this broken body is as paradoxical and healing in this world as the broken body itself. For more curious than the invitation to be a follower in a world looking for trailblazers is the invitation to follow one who, though equal to God, emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, humbling himself to the point of death on a humiliating cross. True imitations of this unordinary love are far more gripping then the next short-lived new thing.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Martin Luther King, Jr., “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech,” A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., 226.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God in Public

January 31, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

God has been in the news a lot lately. From Christian prayers in council meetings, to statements from the highest echelons of the Royal Family and the government, discussion of the place of God and in particular the role of Christianity in Britain today has been in the news on a daily basis. The former Archbishop of Canterbury’s debate with Professor Richard Dawkins captured the twittersphere as Dawkins argued that religion had no place in the 21st century. It seems it is now acceptable to discuss the Christian faith and belief in God in public. From radio studios to the school gate I have enjoyed being a part of this. The role of God in Britain is being discussed up and down the country in government, education, legislation, and community life in a way that I can’t remember in recent history.

While secularism insists that nothing good comes from religion, isn’t it actually the case that it is a Christian heritage that actually provides us with this free and open society—encouraging people to question and reason for themselves? For many, religious faith is a process, a journey of discovery on the basis of evidence, reason, and personal experience. Christianity has provided the foundation in Britain for an open and tolerant society. It was the great Christian leader Augustine who coined the phrase tolerare malus. He claimed that political structure influenced by the Christian faith must tolerate that which it disagreed with and perceived as wrong for the greater good of freedom.

Freedom and tolerance of others arise from a worldview—a set of values and beliefs that are conducive to liberty, they do not come about by random chance. In Britain this foundation or worldview has undeniably been the Christian faith. But this seems to fly in the face of the claims made by leading atheists that belief in God is delusional and oppressive and that people in Britain are not truly religious anyway. Invoking what has come to be known by sociologists as the secularization thesis they tell us that modern countries eventually turn their back on spiritual belief. That as people progress they become less religious.

However, this myth of secularization has plainly not panned out and it has been soundly debunked within academia. The leading sociologist Mary Douglas announced the death of the secularization theory in 1982 in an essay that began with the words, “Events have taken religious studies by surprise.” Even prominent proponents of secularization like sociologist Peter Berger have now abandoned the theory since the world is plainly becoming more religious not less.

Our most profound laws and rights, and the concept of the dignity of the human person expounded in the Magna Carta arise from a Christian vision and assume God’s existence. Our greatest social reform movements from the abolition of the slave trade to the reform of child labor laws, and many other justice movements are the bequest of our Christian heritage as a country. Britain has benefitted so much in our history from Christianity—and this continues today as we see the values of the charitable, tolerant society envisaged by St. Augustine allow for Rowan Williams and Richard Dawkins to debate without fear of reprisals. Does everyone in Britain agree with the central tenets of the Christian faith? No, of course not, but does our Christian heritage make a way for peace, courteous debate, tolerance, inclusion, and freedom? I believe it does.

As people up and down the country discuss belief in God and the newspapers continue to run stories about Christianity, it is my hope that we will continue to see a greater openness to speak and inquire about the gospel in Britain.

Amy Orr-Ewing is director of programmes for the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and UK director for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Oxford, England.

(1) Adapted from an article appearing in Christianity Magazine, March 2012.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Gifts and Discoveries

January 29, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“My soul is too cramped for you to enter it,” lamented Augustine. Later he would find this cry itself something of an answer from God in the first place—for how could a soul articulate its longing for God if the Spirit had not first shown it what it longs for? Yet how familiar these initial attempts to approach God with a dreaded sense of failure seem to be. Is it God who first approaches? Or we who have to first clear the way? Might God approach even in our restless longing, even as our souls are cramped with baggage and the journey at times seems more a fight with self than a means of meeting the Other?

Author and former atheist Anne Lamott begins her story with borrowed words of W.S. Merwin: “We are saying thank you and waving, dark though it is.”(1) She describes darkness in a broken world and an unpredictable childhood, the dimming affects of self-loathing, addiction, fear, guilt, and grief. And yet she somehow describes the presence of one to thank regardless, one whose light gradually appeared through a world that slowly cracked into a thousand pieces—maybe even cracking mercifully?

Whether the journey of faith is a miracle or it is more like a gift that requires some assembly, I’m not sure. “Man is born broken,” quotes Lamott. “He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.” How else would one come to know the Father of Light in the house of a father who despised Christianity. Lamott describes the family codes which solemnly held everyone to unbelief. “It was like we all signed some sort of loyalty oath early on,” she writes, “agreeing not to believe in God in deference to the pain of my father’s cold Christian childhood.” Mercifully or ironically, there was also a sense of moral obligation preached in her household, a clear (even disheartening) scale of good and bad, acceptable and insufficient. Thus, “I bowed my head in bed and prayed, because I believed—not in Jesus—but in someone listening, someone who heard.” Apparently, the cosmic umpire so many know and fear lurches even in atheist households.

Yet from the beginning, there were clues that this someone was relational—in the differences she saw in the social structures of her and her friends’ houses, in the Catholic family who offered images of God both compelling and odd, in her need to please the one who listened, like one might a foreign, unpredictable, unknown king. “This God could be loving and reassuring one minute, sure that you had potential, and then fiercely disappointed the next, noticing every little mistake and just in general what a fraud you really were.”

And yet maybe even broken images of God somehow matter, as God approaches to shatter and re-form even these. Lamott describes a life of encounters with God in places of desperation—in a drunken haze, in a broken vehicle, on the bathroom floor, in deaths and in birth and in dying, in her own vehement denials of an approaching God. When the English teacher she loved became a born-again Christian, she wept at the betrayal and challenged this teacher on everything—”every assertion, even when she was right.” She willed not to believe, even as her own rebellion held the sneaking suspicion that God might be near.

Perhaps faith is indeed more a gift than a discovery, as John Calvin once insisted. If so, I like Lamott’s image of this gift better than most: like a sloppily wrapped package that repulses with absurdity yet somehow compells you to claim it for its beauty nonetheless. Wholly unable and unwilling to see or to seek God, a reluctant Lamott would eventually claim the gift of faith nonetheless. “I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus,” she said at the one who came so near she eventually stopped denying it. “And I was appalled.”

Dark and difficult, holy and absurd though it is, Lamott is right: It’s funny where we look for salvation, and where we actually find it.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) As quoted in Anne Lamott’s, Traveling Mercies (New York: Random House, 1999).

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Sharing Humanity

January 28, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

During a recent stint on jury duty, I had the unique opportunity to ride to and from the courthouse on public transportation—the Metro bus. I say unique opportunity because public transportation affords one exposure to the wide variety of people who live in the city and who make their way around its bustling streets and byways by taking the bus. In fact, a wide gamut of society rides together crammed on the Metro bus. Business people hurry to get to work, multi-tasking laptop, cellphone, and paper folders full of projects and to do lists. Students rush to get to school sequestering themselves from the world of the bus by burying their heads in books or tuning into their iPods. There are also many homeless individuals who ride the bus in the “free zone” downtown back and forth between stops, affording a movable shelter from the cold.

Sheer observation of this dynamic diversity was often the extent of my thoughts as I rode. One morning, a group of developmentally disabled students from the local high school got on the bus with me. I tried to engage in light conversation with the few who sat down next to me, asking where they were going in the city. One young woman just stared at me blankly; another, perpetually talking about absolutely everything and nothing at the same time tried to engage me, but not with an answer. Two other young men simply looked at me, offered a vacant smile, and then returned to fiddling with objects to keep their hands and minds occupied.

As the bus moved forward towards the next stop with our unique human cargo, I was overcome with emotion. I wasn’t crying because I felt sorry for these disabled students or worried about their quality of lives—although I do and I did that day. I wasn’t overcome as a result of my admiration for the adult workers whose vocation led them to care for these students who are often the least and the last—although I do, and I did. I was overcome with emotion because I suddenly identified with these disabled individuals. Though I appear “able” bodied—of sound mind and well put together—I realized that I am just like they are.

Like these disabled students who are broken in body and mind, I have experienced grief in my life that has left me profoundly broken in spirit. As a result of this experience, there are times that I ramble on filling the air with meaningless pieties or pronouncements. Or I offer nothing but a blank stare when I should offer words of comfort. While my appearance is ordered, I am just as distorted and damaged on the inside, confused, and in need of care and oversight because of my disabilities. Though their eyes are vacant or their tongues loll, though they mumble meaningless phrases or say nothing at all, they are not so different from me nor am I from them.

It was this kind of profound identification with another human being—recognizing that though we appear different on the surface we are related to one another—that prompted Jesus to tell a parable about two debtors. As he was dining with religious leaders, a woman had interrupted their festivities by washing Jesus’s feet with her tears and with the finest perfume. Incensed because of her intrusion and asserting his own self-righteousness as one of the faithful, a religious leader remarked to himself that if Jesus was any sort of a prophet he would know what sort of person this woman is who is touching him and that she was a sinner. In the parable Jesus then tells, a moneylender had two debtors. One owed a large amount of money and the other a small amount. Both debtors were unable to repay their debt. Yet the moneylender graciously forgave both of them their debts. Jesus asked the religious leader, “Which of them therefore will love him more?” The religious leader answered, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”

The religious leader answered correctly; yet did he understand that he was a debtor in need of forgiveness? Did he understand that he was just like the sinful woman who anointed Jesus feet with her tears and with the finest perfume? We are not told. But later we are given another story of a religious leader and a tax collector who go to the temple to pray. The religious leader thanks God that he is not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. The tax collector will not even lift his eyes, but beats his breast and cries out, “Have mercy on me, the sinner.” Jesus argues that it is this man who goes down to his house justified rather than the one who believes himself to be religious.(1)

It is so easy, if one counts oneself among the ‘faithful’—regardless of religious affiliation or tradition—to cease understanding that one needs the same mercy as the poorest soul or vilest offender. Just as I was reminded of the true state of my soul as I was encountered by the profoundly disabled students, so these stories of Jesus remind those with ears to hear of our shared identity and our profound need. We share a need for mercy just as we share DNA.

Margaret Manning is a member of the writing and speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) See both stories in Luke 7:40-50; 18:9-14.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Personal Choices

January 27, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

There are some stories that move us whether we hear them at five or fifty-five. The 1965 release of the first Peanuts movie, A Charlie Brown Christmas, was instantly loved by adults and children alike. But it almost did not make it past the television executives who hated it. The movie was criticized for everything from being too contemporary in music, to being too religious in tone. But audiences everywhere confidently disagreed. Having aired every year since its debut in 1965, it is now the longest-running cartoon special in history.

One of my predictably favorite scenes finds Charlie Brown on a hunt for the perfect “great big, shiny, aluminum tree—maybe even a pink one” as instructed by Lucy for their Christmas pageant. At the tree lot, Charlie Brown walks through row after row of flashing, shiny spectacles of color, trying his best to choose well and please his friends. But then he sees a small, natural tree, nearly overshadowed by the flash and glitter of the rest. It is pitiful and loosing needles, but it is the only real tree on the lot. In a moment of confidence, Charlie Brown chooses the unlikely sapling over all the others (and is thus the target of laughter and mockery by all).

Even as children, we seem to know intuitively that there is something remarkable—perhaps something even sacred—about being selected long before we understand the implications of choice at all. That someone saw anything worth choosing in this sickly little tree is a turn in the plot that quiets us. Charlie Brown claims the unlikely, pathetic tree as his own, and there is a part of us that feels claimed too.

The Christian story of God among the world is filled with the language of claiming and calling, gathering and choosing. Yet, stripped of the story and its characters, these words often offend us. We speak of the injustice of a God who claims anyone, who shows signs of favoritism, or calls anyone particularly. We forget what we felt deeply as children—namely, that being claimed among a group of the prettiest and the smartest and the fastest is not about deserving it at all.

In a country of wealth and grandeur, the people of Israel were slaves who were exploited and abused. They were overshadowed, inconsequential, and cast aside, not unlike the tiny tree in the vast lot of color. But God came near and claimed an unlikely people, picking them up, giving them a name, collecting them like a hen gathers her chicks. The book of Deuteronomy recounts the fledging relationship: “For the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance. In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye” (32:9-10).

God’s gathering of the Israelites was not based on prerequisites. Yet it was far from passive and unfeeling, emerging from God’s love, mercy, and wisdom. The prophets would later describe it as the selection of a bride for a bridegroom, and Jesus would later describe himself as the bridegroom who came even closer to beckon that bride to his side. God’s own are referred to as the “apple of his eye,” an expression reserved for those who are most endeared to us. The original Hebrew for the expression can be literally translated as “little person of the eye.” The idiom is surprisingly close to the Latin “pupilla,” from which we get the word pupil. The word means “little doll,” and was applied to the dark center of the eye because of the tiny image of oneself that appears when looking into someone’s eyes. In these words, it is if God expresses, “If you get close enough, you will see that it is you who is held in my eyes.” God’s claiming, in other words, is inherently personal; and the story of the Incarnation is further a claim that God would gather every chick, every creature, every soul as a hen would gather her young.

What we often forget is that our own choices are inherently the same. A spirituality based on preference fails to consider the one it rejects, which is particularly ironic when it rejects due to a distaste of exclusivity. If God comes near enough to choose a forgotten nation, to gather the unlikely, to love them out of no merit of their own, and to give them his name regardless, can we not consider this God behind all of the things we have to say about religion and exclusivity? If God comes even nearer, sending a vulnerable son to reach a dejected people, to cleanse them and claim them out of no doing of their own, and to give them his grace regardless, will we not consider the one we reject when we accuse him of injustice, tyranny, or favoritism? For meanwhile, and regardless, the incarnate God of the Christian story continues to give the weak, the unwise, and the forgotten a new place and name: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.”

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Louder Than Words

January 24, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A popular group on Facebook hosts a collection of people very much opposed to the destruction of an historic fountain in downtown Copenhagen. The name of the group can be translated, “No to the Demolition of the Stork Fountain,” and its members’ outrage fills its Facebook wall. The creator of the group writes of the urgency of the need for action and the call to join the cause and get involved. Almost overnight participation in the cause went viral, members joining and getting the word out to their friends. Click here, forward there, speak out.

Ironically (and more ironic than activism that only requires joining a Facebook group), the cause was completely fictitious. The creator of the page, Anders Colding-Jørgensen, is a professor of Internet psychology who was conducting a social experiment on activism and online behavior. Sadly, had these outraged activists searched just a bit more for information, they would have read on the page itself that it was an experiment and that in fact Anders knew of no plans to destroy the fountain. Yet by the end of the experiment, more than 27,000 people had joined the group with a click of outrage and a desire to join the cause.(1)

Anders’ experiment is one example of what cultural commentators are calling “slacktivism,” online activism that essentially leads to nothing on the part of the participant and no real effect on the cause itself. Slacktivism offers the feeling of doing good without actually having done anything at all. Though not all online causes can be classified as such, they are appealing because they are so easy to join, though we often seem unconcerned with whether they actually accomplish something. It’s simply one more click, one more forwarded email, one more status update; it won’t require writing long letters, standing in lines, or marching the streets. No one will ask you to do anything, and you can feel good about your participation, brief though it is. We may very well be impassioned slacktivists (the Facebook vitriol over the demolition of the Stork Fountain or the acquittal of Casey Anthony was alarming), but they are really just words, a display for display’s sake.

It seems religion has often been accused similarly. Isn’t it all just words? Isn’t Christianity all talk, tenants, and tirades? The Theologian is an owl sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, says one critic, and he is hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for anything real. A nearby bumper sticker berates similarly, “Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish.”

Even in friendlier circles, I am sometimes left with a similar impression among Christians that believing in Jesus has more to do with saying the right things, knowing the right words, holding the proper principles for a watching world. Many a church is filled with people who have the feeling of doing good without having really done anything at all. Knowing Christ can seem more a corollary to knowing the words than the other way around. Is Christianity simply a kingdom of words?

Jesus himself said the kingdom was like a sower who went out to sow seeds. (This does not sound like slacktivism!) Or as the apostle Paul writes eloquently elsewhere, “The kingdom of God is not in words.” What do they mean by this? And how might it answer both the skeptic who thinks religion is all talk and the Christian who reduces the kingdom to words and laws?

For starters I think it means that the kingdom isn’t calling for slacktivists, and that nothing we embrace with spirit and truth can be reduced to words or sermons or the ease of outrage. The kingdom Jesus presents is far more alive than this. More experiential. More whole.

One of my favorite stories of Jesus is in the way he responds to Mary and Martha after their brother has died. When he walks up to Martha, she is full of pain and essentially asks, “Jesus where were you? If you would have come my brother wouldn’t have died.” And Jesus gives her an answer. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life and the one who believes in me will not die. Your brother will rise again.” Jesus gives Martha what he knew she needed, an answer to an honest question. But then Mary comes up to Jesus and asks the exact same question. “Jesus where were you? If you would have been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

Here are two different people asking the same question. And Jesus understands that they need different answers. With Martha he gives her a rational answer. With Mary, he doesn’t say anything. It is the shortest verse in the Bible, in fact. We are simply told that Jesus wept. This was his response to her question. He knew she didn’t need words; she needed a more intuitive response. She needed to know that he heard and shared her pain.

Jesus takes these two identical questions and he knows they don’t need the same answers; they don’t just need words, they need a person, they need a kingdom. He could have told both of them to hold on, that he was about to perform a miracle and call Lazarus out of the grave. But he didn’t rush to that. He heard their questions and gave them a kingdom that is far more than words.

This is a cause worth dropping everything to join. Of course, it will also cost our very lives.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Monica Hesse, “Facebook Activism: Lots of Clicks, but Little Sticks,” The Washington Post, July 2, 2009.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God and Pain

January 23, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The difficult question of pain forms a thorny question on which volumes have been written. Why do the innocent suffer? Why do we face all these diseases? Why the suffering of millions because of natural disasters or the tyranny of demagogues? I do not pretend to have the answers, but one thing I know: pain is a universal fact of life. Likewise, there are moral dimensions in the way we phrase our questions concerning pain, and every religion explicitly or implicitly attempts to explain pain.

But why do we even ask these questions about suffering within the context of morality? Why have we blended the fact of physical pain with the demand for a moral explanation? Who decided that pain is immoral? Indeed, almost every atheist or skeptic you read names this as the main reason for his or her denial of God’s existence.

In the Judeo-Christian framework, pain is connected to the reality of evil and to the choices made by humanity at the beginning of time. The problem of pain and the problem of evil are inextricably bound. So when we assume evil, we assume good. When we assume good, we assume a moral law. And when we assume a moral law, we assume a moral law-giver.

You may ask, Why does assuming a moral law necessitate a moral lawgiver? Because every time the question of evil is raised, it is either by a person or about a person—and that implicitly assumes that the question is a worthy one. But it is a worthy question only if people have intrinsic worth, and the only reason people have intrinsic worth is that they are the creations of One who is of ultimate worth. That person is God. So the question self-destructs for the naturalist or the pantheist. The question of the morality of evil or pain is valid only for a theist.

And only in Christian theism is love preexistent within the Trinity, which means that love precedes human life and becomes the absolute value for us. This absolute is ultimately found only in God, and in knowing and loving God we work our way through the struggles of pain, knowing of its ultimate connection to evil and its ultimate destruction by the One who is all-good and all-loving; who in fact has given us the very basis for the words good and love both in concept and in language.

Not far from my home lives a young woman who was born with a very rare disease called CIPA, congenital insensitivity to pain with anhydrosis. Imagine having a body that looks normal and acts normally, except for one thing: You cannot feel physical pain. That sounds as if it would be a blessing. But the reason it’s a problem is that she lives under the constant threat of injuring herself without knowing it. If she steps on a rusty nail that could infect her bloodstream, she wouldn’t even realize it by sensation. If she placed her hand on a burning stove, she would not know she had just burned her hand except by looking at it. She needs constant vigilance because she could sustain an injury that could take her life or cause serious debilitation. When her family was interviewed some years ago, the line I most remember is the closing statement by her mother. She said, “I pray every night for my daughter, that God would give her a sense of pain.”

If that statement were read in a vacuum, we would wonder what sort of mother she is. But because more than anyone else she understands the risks of this strange disease, there is no greater prayer she can pray than that her daughter feel pain and be able to recognize what it portends.

I ask you this simple question: If, in our finitude, we can appreciate the value of pain in even one single life, is it that difficult to grant the possibility that an infinite God can use pain to point us to a greater malady? We see through a glass darkly because all we want is to be comfortable. We cannot understand the great plan of an all-knowing God who brings us near through the value of pain—or of disappointment with pleasure.

And yet the very thing that enslaves and traps us becomes the indicator of our need for God and the means to draw us to the recognition of our own finitude and to the rescuing grace of God. The pain of pain may well clasp the lifesaving hand of God and draw us into God’s arms.

Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Praying for Bread

January 22, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Huckleberry Finn first heard about prayer from Miss Watson, who told him that prayer was something you did everyday and that you’d get what you asked for. So he tried three or four times praying for hooks to complete his fishing line, but when he still didn’t get what he asked for decided that “No, there ain’t nothing in it.”

Prayer is a curious activity. It is one we seem, at times, regardless of belief or creed, almost inclined naturally toward, while other times, almost as naturally, concluding like Huck that we either can’t make it work or there ain’t nothing in it.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say:

‘Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

And do not bring us to the time of trial.’”(1)

The Lord’s Prayer, which Christian’s still hold and practice today, comes out of this context—that is, out of a plea for help with prayer and out of the praying of Jesus himself. It is not just the good advice Jesus had to offer about praying; it is his praying. In fact, giving his followers this prayer, Jesus, like John, was following a common rabbinic pattern. When a rabbi taught a prayer, he would use it to teach his disciples the most distinctive, concise, essential elements of his own teachings. Thus, disciples would learn to pray as their teacher prayed, and from then on, when a disciple’s prayer was heard, it would sound like that of his teacher’s prayers, bearing his own mark and posture before God.

As this suggests, when Christians pray the Lord’s Prayer today, it is simultaneously an offering of the voice of Jesus, a declaration of belonging to him, and a pronunciation of the lessons he wanted his followers most to learn.

Somewhat different than praying for fishing hooks, the prayer for daily bread is foundational; a literal need. News of world food shortages, the prevalence of malnourishment, and volatile food prices remind us with repetition that cries for basic provision are appropriate and necessary. Fifteenth century theologian Martin Luther spoke of the prayer for daily bread as the plea for “everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”(2) In other words, bread is not merely the private concern of those who need something to eat. It is far broader than this, including far more than bread, and far more than isolated individuals before God. Our daily bread is something friends, neighbors, communities, economic situations, and governments affect collectively. Christ’s prayer for daily bread, then, is a prayer for food and clothing, but also for good neighbors, good rulers, and good conscience as we face need and want and hope together.

As such, a prayer for daily bread can be a reminder that we do not live in a vacuum before God or the world. Rather, we live in communities where we are responsible for one another. So if we pray for daily bread, like Jesus, we pray for God’s care and provision. But subsequently, we are praying against the things in life that prevent God’s provisions. This may well be corrupt governments or systems of social injustice; it may also be our own hardened hearts, fearful spirits, or a self-consumed and consuming living. When our neighbor prays for daily bread, our neighbor prays for our help.

And to pray the words Jesus invited us to pray means we pray out of the same paradox in which Jesus prayed himself. He was both the Son who knew he would need the Father’s provision to get through the days before him and the Son who poured out his life for the crowds and individuals that needed him. Praying for daily bread, we are simultaneously the wealthy who can respond in gratitude for all that God has given us and the impoverished who cry out for the daily bread we need and the God who sustains all things. We are both the rich and the poor, united to our neighbors in ways we are constantly invited to imagine. We join ancient ancestors who prayed for physical nourishment in the desert, and with them know that we are still hungry. In difficult days, in plentiful days, the invitation of Christian prayer is the invitation of the Spirit to join in a united cry—”Give us this day our daily bread”—placed no where less than before the bread of life who comes from heaven to give life to the world.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Luke 11:1-4.

(2) Martin Luther, “The Small Catechism,” The Book of Concord, 357.

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Tag Archives: Zacharias

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Mysterious Safety

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Loss of Words

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Story and Ice

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Blessed Sorrow

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Audacity of Imitation

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God in Public

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Gifts and Discoveries

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Sharing Humanity

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Personal Choices

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Louder Than Words

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God and Pain

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Praying for Bread

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